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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Wilderness Travel Mini-Games V

Here's another attempt at a simple way to engage players while they travel the wilderness while making different types of terrains feel different. (Maybe a better name for these things would be Terrain Challenges, or Travel Challenges Simon?)

This might be the simplest one yet (I'm sure the seed of the idea came from Zak's critical range choice he gives his players):

Each day the party has to move one box. The idea is that in the dark woods you can either be safe or know where you are, but it's hard to do both. Running from encounters leads to getting turned around and all the stands of trees look alike. You can try to mark your way, but your bread crumbs might lead something to you. Treat each box as a corresponding bonus or minus to the wandering monster and getting lost rolls.

If you have any of the folks at the bottom in your party they can shift one box per day as well.

Depending on how you check for monsters and getting lost you might want to cut each side down to 3 boxes. I'm assuming a d6 with results on a one, so you would never completely avoid the chance to have encounters or get lost.

No players will want to get lost, but I'm thinking low level characters may push towards safety just to survive. Hopefully they will stumble upon a road or an interesting ruin before they are finally eaten alive.